Remind Me I'm Still Breathing
by purrfectj
Summary: Standing alone in the middle of a bombed out warehouse, Captain America clutched the tiny girl to his chest and sobbed into her strawberry blonde hair as she tightened dimpled fists in the material of his suit and chanted in her sweet baby voice, "Daddy, daddy, daddy." Steve Rogers has a daughter he's never met. And she's missing. Steve/OFC (Empire State of Mind AU)
1. Chapter 1

Sundays were the best days for Moira Mackney and her daughter, Berry. On Sundays, they started their day with a long, talkative cuddle in Moira's bed, almost two year old Berry whisked from her crib and into Moira's room across the hall, kisses and snuggles and sweet baby giggles before hair brushing and scented lotion for sensitive porcelain skin, mother and baby, clothes arranged and diaper bag packed. They had brunch at their favorite sidewalk patisserie, bitter dark chocolate and buttery scones with fat berries and clotted cream, rich espresso for Moira in a delicate china cup, light frothy milk with a hint of cinnamon, not too hot, in toddler Berry's fanciest sippy cup. After brunch, they strolled along the riverfront, Berry pointing out things she wanted to see or do or touch with an imperious slender finger, happily leading the expedition from her pram, her long spindly legs kicking happily as Moira steered them in and out of pigeons, in and out of storefronts, closer to a young man with dreadlocks and the most beautiful skin wailing mournfully on his saxophone, closer to a tall, spare elderly woman who drew the mother and daughter with fast, deft strokes, taking the money Moira pressed into her hands with a solemn expression and laughing eyes, and finally into the park, their final destination as afternoon nudged evening. Berry's stroller was abandoned near their favorite tree, a huge oak with spreading branches, a blanket arranged just so until Berry was bouncing in her seat, hands outstretched beseechingly to her mother who picked up her daughter and swung her around, once, twice, before depositing her in the very center with another sippy cup, this one full of ice melted into water after their walk, sinking down to join her with her own water bottle.

They lay in the dappled shade, Moira's wavy mahogany hair mingling with Berry's crown of strawberry blonde, Berry cooing to dogs that snuffled close on their masters' leashes, playing with her fingers or toes or Moira's tip-tilted nose until without protest, between one breath and the next, she slipped into the sleep of the innocent, her rosebud mouth open as she dreamed.

Sundays were the best days for Moira Mackney and her toddler, Berry.

Until the Sunday Berry was kidnapped.

OoO

"Walk us through it again, Ms. Mackney," the constable urged, notebook open, pencil poised, and Moira had to choke back the angry words that wanted to spill out, her hands clenched so tightly together below the table that she felt her short nails digging into her palms. "You came in late Saturday night..."

"Yes, closer to Sunday morning, a little after four."

"It was an unexpected delay?" asked the other constable, tapping his pen on the table.

"Yes. The mission..." She almost stumbled, stopping herself but not quite in time if the look shared between the officers was any indication, "assignment went longer than planned."

"And your babysitter wasn't in the home when you arrived?"

No one had been 'in the home' when she arrived, the home that was a glorified gated flat in an extra safe neighborhood with good schools and better safety precautions, a doorman and a keyed entry elevator, not the earnest young college student she'd carefully interviewed and investigated and background checked until she was satisfied, no masked men with guns and angry voices, no sleek women in black leather with apologetic faces, no tall, calm men with eye-patches lecturing her about duty and patriotism, and certainly not her adorable little Berry, bright eyes and wet kisses and bright, cheerful, "Mommy, mommy!" Moira deliberately relaxed her hands. "There was no one in the flat."

"And the alarm had been disabled?" The man quirked his eyebrows together, a paternal frown of concern and judgment. "I understand it was a fairly sophisticated system, not easily tampered with."

"Every lock is made to be broken," she said before she thought, a knee-jerk response, and watched the woman jot something down before ripping off the page and standing up to go to the door. It opened at her knock and her hand, with the paper in it, disappeared for a moment. When it came back, it was empty, and the woman returned to the table, her sharp face even sharper as she observed Moira observing her.

"Yes, well, this one wasn't standard issue." An understatement: it wasn't even widely available on the market, just to princes and kings and somehow to a lowly translations clerk, working in London on loan from the Smithsonian who lived in a fairly high-dollar flat and yet seemed to live within her government-paid budget.

"No," was her answer to a question that he hadn't asked and she knew it had been a mistake to involve the local constabulary, there were secrets that weren't only hers to keep, but when she'd come out of her flat looking wild-eyed and angry and her next door neighbor with his handsome Irish Setter had seen her and asked where her daughter was, whatever she'd said had sent him scurrying back into his apartment, pushing her before him, promising to contact the authorities and she too shell-shocked to stop him.

Moira heaved a sigh and held up a hand as the man started to speak again. She ignored the way he sat back and frowned or the leaning in of the female constable, placing her hands out and open on the table, palm up, to show she meant no harm. "I'm sorry, let's just set aside the formalities. There are three things you should know. I'm not only a translations clerk. Berry's father is someone very important in the states." She wanted to scream or to cry or to beat her fists on something, someone had taken her Berry, but instead she continued, calmly, "And you should call the Director of SHIELD." Without waiting for a response, she rattled off a series of numbers, again when the female of the pair seemed to realize they were a telephone number along with an access code. As the man rose to leave, sharing another of those speculative, suspicious looks with his partner, Moira said, tiredly, knowing the desperation she'd managed to bank was leaking out, spilling over her words, "Please hurry. My daughter's life could be in danger."

OoO

Of course it had to go up the chain of command, she'd expected nothing less. She'd also expected to be detained at the station until they could verify who, or what, she was and why she had a direct access line to the man who held the Avengers' leashes. She spent a few hours trying to imagine the Director's reaction when he got the call, his frustration, his profanity, and wondered if he'd hide this, too, from his team.

She would not, absolutely would not, imagine what Berry's father was thinking or feeling or doing, what he said when, or even the more likely if, they told him the little girl he'd never seen, never held, never touched was gone, poof, like a ghost. She would not, absolutely would not, imagine (hope) that it was Berry's father who had her, precious, tiny, innocent Berry who loved fiercely and deeply.

She would not, absolutely would not, imagine (hope, wish, ache) that Captain America would come swooping in to save his missing child (his missed love).

To her mortification, and she imagined to the relief of the constable, she was crying when they came to tell her the Director would see her now.

Berry had been missing five hours, three minutes, and a handful of seconds.


	2. Chapter 2

Captain America hated Sundays.

Likely or not, it seemed that unless he and his team had been deployed for a mission, and sometimes even then, crime, aliens, and even HYDRA took the Sabbath, and God's admonishment to rest, seriously.

Steve Rogers, the man behind the red, white, and blue spandex outfit and shiny shield, had, as Falcon put it, 'no chill', and so Sundays at loose ends with nowhere to go and be the hero, an empty apartment, and co-workers who were at best nominally friendly and at worst sometimes actively hostile, were terribly, frightfully lonely.

He could sketch and did, for a while, until he caught himself searching for his colored pencils to shade in long, wavy hair in particular hues of red and brown. He could watch movies or television, things he knew he liked or things he had yet to see, and did, for a while, until he found himself watching an old black and white movie, the independent female lead sharp-tongued and flirty, the unflappable male lead smitten. He could read or take a walk or clean or a thousand other things that normal, everyday people did on their lazy Sundays but by lunchtime he was standing at his window high above the city, staring morosely down as people drifted or hurried or paused below him, dogs and traffic and the endless rush of New York, of a Brooklyn that had only a handful of things in common with the one of his adolescence, and wondered where she was, what she was doing, if Sundays were as terrible for her as they were for him.

His phone jangled in his pocket, a tinny version of Tony's theme song, or what he claimed was his theme song, some '70s rock anthem about the suit, and he was just desperate enough that he answered it. "Rogers."

"Gramps, you should get in here. There's been a thing."

And just like that, Steve felt like he was back on solid ground. Even retired, Tony had the damndest habit of leaving out every pertinent detail in his quest to remind Steve that he had missed a large part of the twentieth (and some of the twenty-first) century. It was, in its own horrifying way, comforting, and Steve obliged Tony by blowing out a slow, careful breath before asking in a calm, patient voice, "Get in where and what sort of thing?"

There was a silence unlike Tony, so unlike Tony that the hairs on the back of Steve's neck stood on end, unease crawling up to prod at what Peter called his Spidey-sense and Steve just called old-fashioned gut instinct. Finally, Tony said, "He's going to London. Moira…" There was another, longer pause, and then Tony said, so softly Steve wasn't sure he could have heard him if it hadn't been for super-soldier serum, "Your kid is missing."

He wouldn't remember the taxi ride to the airport, would barely register Tony's oblique look and Pepper's concerned hug, and the ride on a Stark jet was a flash of too-long time that left him shaking and sick. As he stepped out onto the tarmac, he was not surprised to find his boss waiting for him, arms crossed, face set in dark, forbidding lines. "This doesn't concern you, Captain."

All day he had managed to keep himself from the brink of imagining the child he'd fathered and then abandoned, the child he'd made with the woman he loved, of the baby that somewhere might be walking, talking, laughing, and calling someone else, someone that wasn't broken, damaged, regretful, heroic Steve Rogers, 'Daddy'.

All day he'd managed it until now, now as Nicholas Fury's words screamed through him like acid, burning away the grief until there was nothing but rage, cold and deadly, and Steve's voice was clipped and short as he brushed past Fury to step into the waiting car, "It does now."

OoO

Moira took the time to straighten her crumpled clothes, to splash away some of the vestiges of her tears with the sting of cold water, to smooth the braid of her hair into the semblance of order. There wasn't anything she could do for the fact she was an ugly crier, her nose raw, her eyes bloodshot and swollen and surrounded by clumped, shining lashes, her rounded cheeks streaked porcelain white and scarlet, and if Fury had been any other man, she would have hoped to play on his sympathies.

But Fury was one of the many reasons it was just Moira and Berry, one of the many reasons Moira had been banished at the end of her first trimester, banished from the facility, banished from her job, banished from her friends and her home and her country and the man she loved, the man she'd _trusted_ , twelve weeks pregnant and exhausted with it and so furious that one man (the fate of the entire world) had that much control over her life.

Furious that even now the man's reach was long, his shadow deep, and furious because there was every possibility that she was going to have to bend to the point of breaking just to get him to help her.

The constable was waiting for her when she finally emerged from the bathroom, his avuncular air not even in the least soothing as he took her elbow and steered her toward a door down the hall, his knock overly loud in the near lunchtime hush of the end of the station where mostly clerical and administrators worked, cleaner walls and shinier tiled floors, softer lighting, conference rooms where there were projectors and comfortable rolling chairs and big, expansive tables.

It was in a room just like this one, the door swinging wide to reveal Fury sitting at the head of the table, almost smirking as she was led in, he sitting in the exact same position wearing the exact same expression, where she'd agreed that yes, of course she understood, of course this was bigger than one couple and one potential person, barely bigger than a lime inside of her, of course.

She thanked the constable quietly even as she wanted to reach across the table and rake her nails down Fury's smug face, even as she wanted to scream and demand and beg, even as she felt rather than saw someone near Fury's elbow half-rise from his seat and reach out a hand toward her, an abortive movement as she rounded on him, tall, handsome, imposing, impossible Steve Rogers, his naturally golden skin ashen, his eyes, _Berry's_ eyes, pure and blue and devastated.

"What?" was the only word she could manage, jagged and brittle, as Steve avoided her penetrating stare after that one quick glance, busying himself by pulling out a chair for her across from Fury, careful not to touch her as she sank down automatically, ever the gentleman who didn't sit until she was settled. She was tempted, almost beyond endurance, to touch him just to make sure he was real. Instead, she clenched her hands together in her lap and tried to ignore that he was _here_. "I know very little," she warned, eyes firmly on Fury. "The authorities were involved before I was able to do more than recognize that she and her caregiver were missing."

Her. He had a daughter.

Steve blinked, slowly, carefully, and continued to do his best to be invisible. Inside his old, worn boots, his toes had gone numb.

"I know substantially more." Fury slid a Starkpad across to Moira that she accepted and immediately began tapping through, her face tipped down but still visible, the pointed chin, the high forehead, the small nose, the scar under her right eye from the HYDRA revolution she'd weathered with Sharon and a handful of others, the heart-shape not quite but almost ruined by the slash of cheekbones and slender but lovely bow of her mouth. She looked not thinner but sharper, as if the roundness of her cheeks had been hollowed out. He wondered if having their baby (they had a daughter) had changed her so much.

"So much for Tony's fancy alarm system," Moira said finally, breaking the silence and causing Steve to shift awkwardly in his chair, hyper-aware of the chewed state of her nails and the raggedness of her cuticles, habits she'd never quite kicked even as an adult, as she slid the slim black tablet back, angling it slightly toward him. He tapped the table with his forefinger near but not on it, an old signal from years ago that he performed without thinking.

She dipped her chin in acknowledgement: he was here on sufferance and need to know. The tablet had not been offered to him.

"The TK-421 is still in production. How did you get one?" Steve had to stifle a very inappropriate chuckle in the back of his throat at Fury's half-accusatory, half-admiring tone. Moira, he noted, didn't answer, instead making a restless movement with her hands.

"Nothing here tells me who might have my daughter." She hesitated, her eyes flicking to Steve and away. "Or why."

"You know why someone would be interested in her, Ms. Mackney," Fury rejoined severely and Moira flinched, this time her eyes searing across Steve's skin before falling back to her hands, and a terrible, terrible premonition filled Steve's throat. Oh, no. No, no, no.

"Because she might be like Steve," she muttered and before he could think better of it, before he could curb the impulse to _know_ , he blurted, his voice choked,

"Like me?" Which drew both Moira and Fury's stares, Fury's assessing and narrow, Moira's hot and frustrated, and Steve's hunch hardened into painful, depressing certainty. A sharp, tingling sensation shot up his lower legs and into his knees.

"The serum altered your DNA. The child has your DNA. You do the math," Fury confirmed and trying to be rational even as his heart boomed in his chest, Steve looked from Moira to Fury and back again, his brow creased.

"You've never had her tested?"

The silence was long and tense, Moira's lips white, her jaw clenched. Fury leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. "We have been denied access to the child. We could, of course, have taken measures to ensure cooperation but felt that the child, in time, would reveal if she had talents without our interference." Moira remained silent despite Fury's indulgent, paternal tone, despite the way Steve dropped his eyes, his foot under the table nudging her ankle, despite the acid churning in her stomach, the patience that had worn paper thin and was shredding fast. "We were prepared to be patient. Unfortunately, others are obviously not so accommodating."

Steve flinched as Moira drew in a sharp breath through her teeth and pushed back from the table, her chair wobbling and nearly falling as she stood in a rush, palms slapping down on the table. "The child? Patient? Accommodating? What a load of shit." She leaned across toward Fury, her voice even and clearly enunciated, her cheeks blazing with color. "Let's cut to the chase, Director. I agree to let her be tested, you agree to help me find her." Steve couldn't stop the noise of protest that they wanted anything in return for finding a lost little girl (his lost little girl) but was silenced by Fury's quick, almost eager acquiescence.

"Yes, tested and, if those tests are positive, you allow us some access for training and supervision. Within reason and with your permission, of course," Fury added and Steve's stomach cramped as Moira's nose wrinkled, her mouth puckered, and she dismissed him and Fury with one eloquent hand movement as she straightened.

"Of course," she mimicked sourly, shaking her head as she turned to go. Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to let Steve so easily off the hook, she paused at the door to look over her shoulder at him where he sat, the perfect solder, straight and unbent, looking perplexed rather than absolutely furious that someone, anyone, wanted to barter quid pro quo for his daughter's life. "Tell the truth and shame the devil, Director. The only reason you've stayed away from us all this time is because you hoped if you pretended to forget she existed, your golden boy, your star-spangled puppet, would forget, too. Forget that somewhere out in the world, there is a little girl who might have his nose or his chin or his smile, his laugh or his incredible gift for self-sacrifice." Her laugh was rusty and burned her throat, her heart trying to rise with her gorge, breath short and unstable as Steve's beautiful mouth opened, no sound emerging, apology in his eyes. "Joke's on you, though. He doesn't even care enough to ask her name."

She managed to close the door gently behind her, managed to make it to the bathroom before she was terribly, violently sick, what little she'd eaten, a stale cereal bar and overlarge latte sometime the day before around 2 am, swirling down the sink. When she was finished, she dropped to the floor and leaned her cheek against the cool porcelain of the basin, closing her eyes even as her knees protested the unforgiving nature of the government-issued tile. "Damn you both to hell," she whispered.

Behind her, in the room where Steve had dropped his head into his hands and Fury had stood to walk to the window, they could hear Moira retching. Over the sounds of her disgust, Fury admitted conversationally, "She's not wrong."

Steve, aching as if he'd gone ten rounds with the Hulk, filled with self-loathing and a growling frustration that he deserved her scorn, made no answer, simply lifted his head to stare at the man he'd allowed to smash his life to bits, the man he had bled and fought and given up everything that mattered for. He wouldn't ask. He'd given up that right long before Moira's child had made her appearance in this world.

Fury scratched at the patch over his eye, readjusted it. His words fell into the space between Steve's ribs where his heart should be, fast, sharp pangs. "Her name is Sarah Anne. She was named for her grandmothers but was born with such an amazing head of red fuzzy hair that the nurses called her Strawberry. It stuck." Fury's mouth relaxed. "Everyone calls her Berry."

Captain America, _he,_ had a daughter. She had red hair. She'd been named for his mother. She might have his abilities or his chin or his smile. And she was missing, taken by people who knew more about her than her own father.

"Berry," he murmured, testing out the name.

It tasted like ashes on his tongue.


	3. Chapter 3

She answered the phone because she knew he wouldn't, his body ranged alongside hers in the oversized luxury bed, his bristly cheek on the soft slope of her breast, one arm thrown carelessly across her waist, her legs trapped by his, a big, dangerous animal enjoying the lazy affection after really good sex. The way he nuzzled her told her he gave less than two shits about who was on the other end of the line. She didn't, either, particularly, more interested in the rasp of his lips across her nipple and the tickle of his cool fingers on the crease of her thigh, but she answered it anyway.

She should have checked the display.

"Don't hang up," Steve begged to her drawled,

"Romanov," and Natasha pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. "You have thirty seconds," she advised even as her lover grunted and rolled away, the bathroom light glinting harshly off his arm and into her eyes before the door schnicked closed behind him.

"Someone took … Berry."

Natasha sat up and kicked away the sheets, already reaching for clothes and weapons. "Are there any leads?" she demanded, phone balanced between her shoulder and her chin as she strapped the knife sheath to her thigh, the Widow's Bite to her wrists, and briefly mourned the mangled gun holster and missing revolver, lost somewhere in the Seine the night before playing war games.

Fucking SHIELD.

"Not really. Fury has a team here dusting for prints and whatever else they do."

Steve's swallow was audible, a choking sound, and whatever sympathy there was left to stir in Natasha whimpered mournfully as she forced herself to rap on the door to the bathroom and ask in a loud voice meant to carry, "How long has Berry been missing?"

The door whipped open fast enough to make her take one half-step back, not in defense or surprise but to make room for the metal hand that ripped the phone away from her. "This better not be some half-assed plan to bring us in," James barked and Natasha stilled in the act of pulling on her pants, struck by the realization she was going, hoax or not, a sentiment James obviously shared as he, too, began to layer weapons under clothes.

"I didn't...I didn't think of that. I wouldn't...I just need..." There was a long, long pause where no one except Natasha moved, packing their bags, tidying the bed, finding a gun tucked behind the toilet in the bathroom and another taped into the cabinet by the window. "Please, Buck."

She finished in time to hear the last, James's pale, misty green eyes closing slowly in a face gone as white as milk as he breathed through his nose. She leaned her cheek against his back, one hand spread open across the tight, flat skin of his belly, the other offering him the SIG that had been in the bathroom, the window gun already stowed safely in her bag. He holstered it without looking, his metal hand covering hers after, their fingers threading together, a tight, familiar squeeze. "Okay, Steve," he said quietly into the phone. "Okay."

She took the phone from him, rose on tiptoe to rub her mouth over the place where ropey scar tissue met replacement limb, felt him shudder and then again, his head falling forward as she listened to the details Steve was able to give her, a place and time to meet, empty but earnest promises of safe passage, a bolthole where there might be some cash and false identities. When he stuttered over the realization he didn't have Moira's contact information to give her, she just told him they'd be there in a day, maybe less, and disconnected.

"Tell me why he has your number." James peeked over his shoulder through the curtain of his dark hair, left undone yet, and she was brushing it back behind his ear to see his eyes, weary and wary, before she thought better of it, her smile wistful.

"After," she said, the phone already ringing through to the contact she'd chosen and he nodded, letting her hold him as a cheerful female voice answered,

"Talk dirty to me."

"Darcy. We need clearance. Someone has the baby."

"Shit. Okay. Shit. Give me three hours, no, two, no, three, fuck, the usual suspects?"

Natasha leaned into James, let him take her weight as his free hand slid back and around, cupping protectively over her hip. "Two hours, Darce, and it'll just be us this time."

"You're the boss." The clacking of keys grew loud and obnoxious. Natasha smiled involuntarily as Darcy rang off with, "And tell Bird-Brain Number 2 he's an asshole."

OoO

Moira had managed to avoid Steve for the almost the whole of the ransacking of her flat, the bright open space of kitchen and living area, the cool dark sanctuary of her bedroom and bath and closet, but watching strange hands digging through the fanciful fairy bedroom she'd created for her daughter, morning sunshine walls, random width pine floors stained a dark loamy brown, plush rugs in cheerful pastels patterned with dragonflies and ladybugs, the antique wooden rocking chair where she'd learned to laugh again as Berry twined her way around her battered heart, had been a brutal kind of invasion. Heartsick and alone, she finally had to retreat out into the hallway, hands balled into fists, only to catch the tail end of Steve's conversation.

"Sharon, please, try to understand..." She watched him rub his hand across his forehead and down the back of his neck, heard him sigh. She remembered that tone, that sweet, cajoling note in his voice, asking her to keep the light on, to keep the bed warm, that he'd be home in a couple of days, sweetheart. "Sharon, I didn't…yes, okay, you're right, I shoulda told you but it wasn't...no, of course I haven't!" And that one, the shocked disbelief, the surprise that she could question him, Captain America, everyone's hero, trustworthy and loyal. Oh, she remembered those conversations after she'd been more than the secret agent in the apartment down the hall sent to handle him and before Fury had shown up bleeding out to the strains of an old 45 and Bucky's less-than-triumphant return. After he'd charmed her into bed over coffee and cinnamon buns and shared laundry, her panties and his boxers snuggling together in a load making him blush and stammer, his smile hesitant and hopeful and wary when she told him who, what, she was.

Before there had been Sokovia and the Accords and a thousand things he wouldn't say as duty took precedence over love.

Steve looked up, vivid blue eyes and weary sculpted down-turned mouth and Moira was torn between the past and the present, the past where she'd have gone to him and laid her cheek over his heart, offering and accepting comfort and the simple joy of being together, and the present where Agent 13, another Agent Carter, had more of a right to touch him that she ever would again, Berry a tiny living barrier between what Moira wanted and what she had. "I've got to go," he said abruptly, dropping the phone into his pocket, and before she could retreat he was on her, the hand that had hesitated to touch her hours ago curling around her bicep and joined by its mate, and she didn't even offer a token resistance as he bent down toward her, his breath tickling her ear, his big body maneuvering her into a corner near the door.

"I called Bucky," he whispered and she jerked, caught in the act of sliding her arms around his waist. Too late she realized he'd been trying to conceal his intentions by embracing her and fool that she was, she'd been not only participating but instigating. His fingers tightened on her skin as she tried to retreat, his mouth brushing her cheekbone, her brow, the corner of her mouth, a low, animal sound drawn from deep in his chest as she capitulated and leaned into him, her fingers fisting in the back of his t-shirt.

"Fury won't let that happen," she whispered back, their bodies almost but not quite touching, a pantomime of an embrace that tightened things low in Moira's belly and loosened her thighs, and weak and needy and balanced on the knife's edge of terror, she buried her nose in the curve of his neck. Bolstered by his hands spreading open along her back, by the unsteady way those beautiful, long-fingered, artist's hands trembled and pressed her closer, she snuggled close like Berry seeking comfort, nuzzling into the hollow where he smelled of man and spice and _Steve._

She was so soft against him, soft and warm and womanly, and Steve leaned his cheek on her hair and remembered how stunned he'd been the first time he'd slipped her out of her clothes. Moira was built like a pin-up girl, the kind he and Bucky had snickered and drooled over in the days before Bucky had grown up and filled out and discovered the joy of reality and Steve had lagged behind until there was serum and Peggy and a tour bus of willing and enabling females. Moira was pillowy, lush breasts, narrow waist he could almost span with his hands, wide, curved hips, the generous temptation of her ass, and legs that didn't go on forever but were perfectly proportioned for her petite height. And she was Moira with the loud laugh and the serious eyes and the first time since he'd been pulled from the ice that he remembered _home_.

They might have stood there for hours, holding each other, if the young man who'd been sifting through Berry's room hadn't cleared his throat apologetically. Steve's arms loosened but Moira's didn't and he frowned down at her while she barked, "What?" her voice muffled by his jaw.

"We found a listening device, Ms. Mackney. Director Fury said you could see it."

Moira didn't stiffen. She didn't even look up, only burrowed closer. Steve's embrace tightened reflexively. "Is it a rabbit? Brown, floppy ears with polka dots and a matching bowtie?"

"Yes?" At Steve's narrowed eyes, the agent shifted and swallowed, running his fingers over the buttons on his shirt. "Yes, ma'am."

"Tell the Director it was a gift." Steve shifted until he could see Moira's profile, his stomach doing a pitch and roll dive when she peeked up at him, eyes big and wide and wet, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. He knew that face, the promise and the encouragement and the big, wide open heart.

"Moira?" he asked, hesitating, and she nodded encouragingly, hopefully, and Steve's heart went on a wild, uneasy gallop. He had to close his eyes for a moment, gather his courage. Finally, he managed, "Moira, who gave you the bunny?"

She laughed, a harsh, discordant sound, soaked with her tears, and Steve felt his own eyes begin to burn and itch. He cleared his throat, dug his fingers into her lower back, resisted shuffling his feet. "Moira…" he started again but he'd already bungled whatever opening she'd given him, a tear slipping down her cheek.

"Berry, Steve. The bunny belongs to _Berry_. Your _daughter_." She stepped away, pushing him a little, palms flat on his chest. It was like pushing a tree, immovable and unfeeling. Presenting him with her back, already ashamed of her weakness as she dashed at the tears on her cheeks with her fingertips, she said crisply to the agent who was still standing in the door with his carefully neutral expression, "Fury will have to wait."

"For what, ma'am?" he asked when it became clear Steve wasn't going to. The young man flinched, visibly flinched, when Moira said only,

"Good luck," as she turned and strode away, stiff and straight, to the stairwell, disappearing into the black, gaping mouth.

"Captain?"

"Yeah?" Steve asked, trying to smile and failing utterly, his cheeks aching with the effort. "If you're thinking I can crack the code…"

The young man shook his head swiftly. "No. No, it's just…I didn't know she used to be an agent."

It wasn't what he wanted to say at all and Steve clapped him lightly on the shoulder in commiseration. "She used to be a lot of things."

 _She used to be everything._


	4. Chapter 4

The rabbit along with the encrypted laptop where it stored its digitally-captured voice with limited infrared-camera capabilities had been gifts from Xavier's School for Gifted Children, delivered soon after Berry in a baby pink box with an elegant white ribbon, the sophisticated signature on the note _Jean Grey_. Moira had asked Darcy, sudden hacker extraordinaire and fellow dissident, to take a look at it, suspicious because Moira had met the current headmistress of Xavier's only the once when Jean was touring the Avengers facility. While she'd liked the cool, collected mutant with the incredibly kind eyes, the Sokovia Accords that had ripped apart Moira's life had also neatly folded the X-Men into the Avengers Initiative. She wasn't inclined, then, to trust the rabbit didn't actually belong to Fury.

"Nah," Darcy declared, dropping her feet from Moira's coffee table with a grunt when James bopped her on the top of the head, Natasha too busy rocking a cooing Berry to pay anyone else any notice. "It's a nice gift, not broadcasting anywhere. Now it is also extra special sparkly encrypted by Aunty Darcy." She winked at an exhausted Moira when James leaned forward to kiss the baby's forehead, both he and Tasha murmuring in Russian to the kicking, squirming Berry. "Let's just see someone try to mess with sweetness."

But they had, _they had_ , and the bunny had been sent accidentally through the wash wrapped in Berry's beloved blankey almost a month ago and while Moira was rated above average with computers, she'd been unable to finesse the laptop into giving up its secrets. Darcy, loud, no-filter, protective Darcy, would be with James and Natasha, though, and Moira had to hold onto that as she leaned her cheek against the cold brick of the building where she'd made her life without Steve, closing her eyes and shivering as the chilly wind gusted past, her thick sweater, jeans, and boots no match for its autumn bluster. Autumn was usually her favorite time of the year, cooler weather and fuzzy socks and a real log fire in the grate that made a huge mess but soothed both she and Berry, curled up in blankets and reading a story.

Down that path, though, lay despair for beneath her panic and anxiety over Berry's kidnapping lurked the memories of the crackle and snap of another fire in another fireplace, Steve's hands on her bare skin after months of dancing around each other in the hall, on the stairs, in front of the mailboxes, pretending not to see each other only to culminate in his gasping, arching "Please," after that last, fateful meeting in the laundry room, his halting confession that he wasn't sure he could love someone else, her naïve belief it didn't matter.

Waking up with him in the throes of a nightmare, wrapping herself around his shivering, chilled body like a living blanket.

Laughing with him over another of the movies on his list as they ate popcorn and drank beer.

Staring at him across the breakfast table as he grinned at her, lopsided and teddy-bear adorable, his hair mussed by her fingers, his bare feet nudging hers and the terrible, sinking sensation that she'd already handed him her heart.

Crying as he lay so still in the hospital bed and him trying to comfort her, his hand on her face as she smacked his shoulder and admitted she loved him, dammit, and his smile so big and foolish as he called her 'Moira-mine' for the first time.

Holding his hand, his grip almost too tight, as he talked to the best friend he remembered and not to the asset that had almost killed him, Fury and a weary, worn Charles Xavier hovering in the background, watchful and worried and expectant.

The first time he told her he loved her, blood on his knuckles and at his temple, his suit torn, her gun still hot in her hand and her ankle likely broken as he bowed her back and kissed her to within an inch of her life, killer robots be damned, Falcon and the Soldier smirking in the background. "A part of me will always love Peggy," he whispered later, their foreheads pressed together as she curled in his lap. "But I deserve to be happy, and you make me happy."

Watching the stick turn pink, positive pink, pretty pink, and his face as bright and shiny as a new penny as he picked her up until she could almost touch the ceiling, his cheek on her belly.

Banned from meeting after inquiry after committee in Congress, at the United Nations, at the facility, with Fury and Xavier and the President and the NSA and the Premier and the King of some country no one had ever heard of, Steve Rogers losing ground to Captain America as the protestors in the streets blamed the mutants for the destruction and called for genetic testing and cleansing and incarceration. _Is it your child, your neighbor, your wife? They are among us._

His face, hard and set and oh so fucking calm as he burned all her dreams, all her hopes, all they'd built together, to the ground, for the promise and the threat that if he just signed the Accords, Fury's hold on his reins would ensure politics would include, rather than exclude and vilify, mutants. That the X-Men would join the Avengers in protecting the world and register themselves based on Xavier's promise.

Giving birth alone, James and Natasha and Darcy coming too late, no one to hold her hand or remind her to breathe, no name to give their baby but his mother's and her own. No one to share in the joy or the work or the utter, unconditional love for the bright little light they'd made together.

Avoiding the news because no one, no one outside the charmed circle of the Avengers, had known she and Steve were together, were a couple, had a child, complete blackout on former SHIELD agent Moira Mackney, and so it was with great pride and an incredible amount of fanfare that the internet could declare Steve Rogers falling in love with Peggy Carter's great-niece "endearing", the two a "handsome, striking, successful power couple for the ages", hands clasped tightly at Peggy's funeral, Steve's eyes red and wet, grief written in the tremble of his lips, Moira's heart breaking for him, Sharon's smile somehow both sad and smug.

There had always been a strange sort of rivalry between the two women bred by their similar trajectories and fostered by their differences. Moira had been two years ahead of Sharon in the academy, Moira third in her class, Sharon first. Moira was good with languages, could speak five and read four more; Sharon was good at hand to hand, a practitioner of three different martial arts. They scored about even in weapons training, were equally skilled with electronics, could both lead a team and follow directions. Moira was better at triage, medical and operational, in the field; Sharon liked to blow things up and had an eye for detail. Moira didn't hate the lab and could decipher documents in a pinch; Sharon would rather gouge her eyes out with a spoon than be anywhere but in the thick of the action. Sharon had a famous family she denied; Moira was a foster kid spit out of the system at eighteen. When it came time to assign one of them to Steve, it was Moira only because Sharon had already been promised to the CIA on a joint op.

It had never occurred to Moira that perhaps Sharon had designs on the good Captain. Or that Steve, who loved so completely and selflessly and destructively, also loved based on proximity.

"Moira."

"Hello, Sharon."


	5. Chapter 5

He knew she liked a little coffee with her cream, a little salt on her caramels, and hated ketchup.

He knew she never smelled quite the same from day to day because she had an expensive addiction to scented body lotion.

He knew she'd clawed her way out of the foster system and into SHIELD with a single-minded determination to both serve her country and get a paid education.

He knew how her laugh would burst out of her, big and bold, how her sobs were always stifled deep in her chest, and how filthy her mouth could be when she was roused to temper or passion.

And he knew to give her a little time, a little distance, before he went after her if he didn't want her to cut him off at the knees.

Their daughter ( _he had a daughter_ ) didn't have that time, though, and so he followed her out into the chilly autumn day after only three minutes and twenty-four seconds.

He counted.

Finding her in a face-off with Sharon and Fury was not how he wanted more of this awful day to go.

Sharon, slim and military straight, angled her body toward him as he stepped into the tableau, her brown eyes annoyed as they cut to him. Moira, fierce and hunched, angled her body away from him, arms crossed defensively over her breasts. Fury, calm and implacable and slightly amused at something if the curl to his lip was any sort of measure, jerked his head to indicate Steve should take up his habitual spot to the left and slightly behind, guarding Fury's flank; Steve, a spurt of defiance curdling his stomach and stiffening his spine, instead stepped up until he stood nearly hip to hip with Moira, the back of his hand brushing the softness of her sweater. The curl of Fury's lip increased as he declared, "Sharon will be point man on the retrieval op."

"Do you think that's a good idea, Director?" Steve asked, aware he was digging a deep, wide hole as Sharon's lips compressed and Fury's smirk eased into slightly beetled brows. Next to him, Moira flinched and Steve let his fingertips press into her side, a butterfly brush of solidarity.

"Are you implying I can't do my job?"

He considered his words carefully, picking over each one as if his life ( _his daughter's life_ ) depended on them. Moira was there first. "I think you might be compromised." When Sharon scoffed and Fury hmmed, Moira dropped her hands, cocking her hip to hide that her pinky had curled around his, and Steve found the words, "She's mine, Sharon."

"The child or the woman, Captain?" Fury asked then waved away the sound neither Moira nor Sharon could stifle. Steve's belly quivered. "I know where this is going." Fury pointed at Moira. "You cannot lead this operation."

"If you think I'm sitting on my hands, you're insane."

"You're no longer an agent." Sharon's voice was flat and final but Steve felt Moira's fingers brush the center of his palm and watched Fury watch Moira and Steve whispered,

"Take the girl out of the agency…" Moira's hand slipped completely into his as grief ripped a hole through Steve's heart, stealing his breath. He had said that to her in the long ago, his hand possessive on her belly, a question, _"What would you do, Moira, if you weren't an agent?"_

And Moira remembered, too, her giddy laugh, her hand pressing over his over the life they'd created together by accident but that she already loved absolutely, as absolutely and completely as she loved Steve Rogers: _"Be yours."_

Then she wasn't his anymore and she had a baby to feed and Natasha knocking on her door and James, his eyes so sad but his smile so wide when he picked Berry up out of her crib and cradled her in his metal arm and she cooed at him, blowing bubbles. "She likes me," he declared and Moira had to agree that, yes, Captain America's daughter did, indeed, like the best friend of the man who'd abandoned them.

"You've been out of the field for three years." Sharon's voice wanted to be firm but it wavered as did her eyes, from Fury back to Moira and then to Steve, a plea in them that had him frowning in consternation at her and taking the final half step so his body was touching Moira's from shoulder to ankle.

Moira shivered, goosebumps racing across her arms, down her legs, but she let out a slow, careful breath. She could already see what she wanted in Fury's expression, in the slight head tilt he made, acknowledging the secrets she'd kept and mocking the ones he'd always known.

"Not completely," he said, slowly. "On paper, Ms. Mackney works for Interpol."

"As a lab tech reading dead lan… _Widow_ ," Sharon hissed and everyone, including Fury, instinctively looked over their shoulder for the woman who wasn't there. Steve coughed and Moira tightened her lips so she wouldn't laugh.

"Yes, Widow and the Soldier and I suspect our little mole who can't keep her nose out of SHIELD business." When neither Moira nor Steve said anything, Fury's remaining eye rolled in its socket. "All right, if that's the way you want to play it. I know you're still field rated in all the ways that count, Ms. Mackney." He turned his attention to Steve. "But you, Captain, are moving on."

For a moment, Steve was balanced on the knife age of the decisions he'd made in the past, the decision to leave Peggy waiting for a date that was never going to come home for a promise of a better future, the decision to let Moira raise a child ( _their child)_ alone and lonely to protect other children, the decision to abjure everything in his life that was good for everything he'd thought was right.

The decision to be Fury's dog with no bone to call his own.

He felt Moira's hand, soft and small and capable, squeeze his and then start to let go. He held on tight, lacing his fingers with hers, and thought of himself as a tree, planted firmly beside the woman and the child he had let down in the most terrible, awful, blood and bone way, by the river of his life that had, until now, flowed swiftly past him, and said, "No. You move."

Moira felt hope burst so hard and fast in her belly that she stumbled, only Steve's hand in hers keeping her from falling.

To perhaps even her own surprise, it was Sharon who capitulated, "We'll need a staging area. Mackney?"


End file.
